Lost Clans of a Hidden War

Chapter 20

Shady Dealings

Doctor Cynthia LeClair sat in the waiting room of the Clan Home emergency medical facility. The ambulance had beaten her here by several minutes and by the time she'd found a place to park and gotten inside, Max had been taken into the ICU. The Doctors wouldn't allow her to go see him; instead saying that his heart had started beating again, but that for some reason, he was unresponsive to stimuli and might as well be considered comatosed. They did state that his brain activity was unnaturally high for someone in his condition and they considered that both a good and ominous sign that Max was dealing with something on a much deeper level than they had the technology to observe. The doctor also stated that once they thought he'd had enough time to rest, they'd allow family to visit.

Cindy was known by the staff here since she'd often worked with them on various cases, and she informed them that Max had no family locally. This seemed to confound the weasel hybrid for a moment before he told Cynthia that he would allow her in to see him since Max was her patient, but only after an eight hour hold where Max could rest in relative peace and quiet.

That was four and a half hours ago and Cindy kept catching herself looking at her watch and wondering what in the hell was taking Samantha so long to get here. When she'd contacted her on the comm, Sam had sounded extremely high strung at the news and she had explained what had happened in the research cavern and what exactly had set Max off.

Cindy had chewed a strip out of Sam's ass for that, even if it hadn't been her fault and Sam seemed to take it as if it had been.

"What in the hell were you thinking Sam?" the marten hybrid asked with anger clearly in her voice. "I warned you, and everyone else, that he was barely hanging on no matter what he looked like on the outside!"

Samantha's monotone reply had pulled her up short though. "It was Commander Black," she'd informed the marten. "He seemed to feel that Max wasn't going to make it here until he finally cracked and had time to recover..." Cynthia heard her let out a bone weary sigh. "I was about to intercede when Max finally lost it."

"Why didn't you step in sooner?" she'd asked, most of the venom out of her voice this time.

Cynthia heard a sudden, fluttering intake of breath on the other end, and she could hear unshed tears in Sam's voice when she responded. "He's been so strong Cindy... I was so... I was so proud and blown away by how well he was taking it all... I didn't think anything was going to break him," she half wailed in a breathless tone of voice that told Cindy that Sam was very close to losing it herself.

"Sam, I warned you to take it easy on him... Why didn't you listen?" the marten asked with a touch of her own anguish coloring her words.

"I thought he had time..." Sam breathed over the line. "I thought we had time..." she murmured in a half audible whisper.

"Oh for the love of God Sam, he isn't dead!" Cindy exclaimed in exasperation. "But at the very least, he's had a psychotic break. He may be fine when he wakes up, or he may not even be Max anymore," she warned. "You have to understand, from everything I've read in his files and from what I've learned from talking to him, his anger stems from the fact that in all of the fire squads he was a part of during the Third Korean War and the Cartel War, he was almost always the only survivor. Hell Sam, you know what a tight knit group a fire team is! What if every time you were in one, everyone died except for you?"

The line was silent for several moments before Sam's voice replied, "I'd probably think I was cursed. Hell I'd probably think that if I got close to anyone..." she trailed off.

Cindy nodded and then remembered Sam couldn't see her. "Exactly. And then the one person he lets himself get close to after all this time..." she said trailing off. She knew it probably wasn't very fair to Sam, but she needed the hard headed skunk hybrid to understand.